Episode 36: Giving Thanks (to turkeys)

Happy Thanksgiving,

Two years ago, around this time, I started filming my Thanksgiving experience, which resulted in me filming pretty much every Minnesota food adventure that happened after that (…thus began The Perennial Plate). This Thanksgiving episode was filmed at LTD Farm where the farmers invited the consumers to help butcher their turkeys and learn about the process. It’s very touching, but also a little graphic (you have been warned).

Hey, speaking of giving thanks, I'm highly involved in the health industry and see people getting all kinds of anxiety over Holiday eating – and trying to lose weight or work out real hard to burn off all them pesky calories. My friend Scott has written a truly remarkable article about communion with food and family and leaving health obsession on the back doorstep. A must read…

Great content, great concept for the farm to involve people like that. My perception is that farmers wouldn't frequently think to involve their consumers like this in their operations, even if they could use the help – but I feel that there's loads of demand for people to connect to their food and would want to be involved if it was an option. On my to-do list is to figure out how to bridge that gap in our local scene here.

LTD is awesome right? you'd be surprised and how much farmers would welcome help. It's like the crop mob thing. In filming this video, I didn't have much time because I had to get the video out the next day, but there was so much great work being done and Khaiti whose farm it is, has lots of great stuff to say.

I saw your turkey murder on Grit TV. FYI, when you have a turkey hanging upside down and you wait a few minutes, it would be unconscious and would not have to suffer like the unfortunate bird in your video. You also, in my opinion, are guilty of child abuse for forcing the child who asked you not to "kill a defenseless animal" to witness your inconsiderate violence. I can see by your site that you think it's ok to slaughter and eat anything that moves, including baby animals. Since I cannot myself lawfully show you what it feels like to have your throat slit while you are fully conscious, I can only hope you get eaten slowly by a member of the animal kingdom.

OK….I got a couple of questions for you Jimmy….First of all….you think it’s wrong to kill an animal that God put on this earth for us to eat…yet, you hope that a human, that was created in God’s likeness…gets killed by an animal…and slowly at that? OooooK…. And, why is it NOT ok to “slaughter and eat anything that moves, including baby animals”? Is there some list somewhere that says what animals are ok to eat or not ok to eat? If so, who made the list? YOU? And why does the age of the animal matter? Just how old does an animal have to be for YOU to consider it ok to eat? Exactly how many days? Also…you consider it abuse to subject a child to the act of killing of an animal intended to be eaten? You think it’s better to have those animals caged up on top of each other, urinating and defecating on each other, killed in masses, then processed and ship around the world to be sold on nice little styrofoam trays? You think it’s better to “pull the wool” over a child’s eyes and not let them see the sacrifices that are made so that they may live? I personally think it’s much better to let a child see exactly where his/her food comes from. I think it will help them appreciate and respect that animal and animals in general much more! I believe it will help that child to not be as wasteful with their food as a lot of us are these days! Lastly….I can appreciate your opinion and your viewpoint, but I do not agree with them. However, I do not hope or wish for a slow painful death for you, or any ill will at all for that matter, just because I do not agree with you! That Mr. Foot…would just be cruel!